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Photo: SAKIS MITROLIDIS / AFP / TT
The shattered hotel in the Greek village of Árnissa. Image from last Friday.
A hotel in the village of Árnissa in northern Greece was destroyed last week when it was known that the hotel would accommodate immigrants.
According to witnesses, some 250 people looted and burned down the empty hotel.
“My father, who is old and lives near the hotel, has not slept for two days out of fear,” a woman told AFP.
The Greek government has promised to move more than 2,000 asylum seekers to the mainland to reduce pressure on the camps on the Greek islands. But locals have protested in various parts of Greece.
People who were reported to have moved to Árnissa from the Mória refugee camp on the island of Lesbos have been prevented from moving to another village in northern Greece.
Government spokesman Stelios Petsas says protesters have been given incorrect information that migrants could spread the coronavirus.
– Not everyone has understood that we have taken very specific measures since the beginning of the health crisis, he says.
The mayor of the city of Édessa, also in northern Greece, questioned the decision to move migrants during the current crown pandemic, shortly before the attack on the hotel.
“Now that we are careful with the spread of the coronavirus … they decide to move the migrants,” writes the mayor of Édessa, Dimitris Yannou, on Facebook.
The migrants in Lesbos were finally secretly taken to a hotel near Thessaloniki by the United Nations Organization for International Migration (IOM).
– These people remain in quarantine for 14 days as prescribed, says an IOM representative.
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